“Most people who shared a room would take out the extra bed and dresser, or at least spread their own stuff around, when the other person moved out.”
“I guess I never felt like I could do anything with Violet’s stuff, because it’s hers.” Of course, Will had a point. Violet had been gone five months. She called me occasionally, but I hadn’t seen her at all. If she’d wanted her stuff, she would have come to get it by now.
We’d reached the fence. He threw his flip-flops over first—bright boy—and then vaulted over easily. I tossed my flip-flops over, then handed my stuff to him on the other side. By the time I climbed down, he was peering at my phone.
“You do have an alarm on here, like everybody else,” he said. “You can make it louder so it will actually wake you up.”
“Yeah, I know.” I picked up my backpack and followed him across the parking lot, tapping my drumsticks on my hip. “But then it goes off on the weekends when I don’t want to get up so early.” Specifically, when I had been out late the night before.
“You can set it one way for weekdays and another for weekends,” he said. “Look.” He held out the phone.
I didn’t even glance at it. “Too complicated.”
He stopped so suddenly that I nearly ran into him. “Remember yesterday when you were complaining to me about how Bob and Roger won’t take very easy steps to help themselves? You were getting really frustrated and wondering why they’re such dorks?”
Grimacing, I secured my drumsticks under one arm and took my phone from him. “Point taken. And ambience ruined. I thought we’d had a nice sexy morning together, but you’re basically calling me a pudgy old man.”
His eyes softened, and he touched my bottom lip with his thumb and forefinger. He murmured, “Does this school have a rule about PDA in the parking lot?”
“I don’t know,” I whispered. “Let’s find out.”
He slid his hand down to my chin and held me there while he kissed me. His mouth was hot on mine. My whole body shivered in the humid morning.
“Hey!” somebody shouted from a passing car. “At least stand on a line while you’re doing that. You’re taking up a space.”
Will broke the kiss but pulled me closer protectively. Squinting over my head and looking annoyed, he shot the car the bird.
“That’s not going to help your popularity,” I warned him.
“This is the Home of the Pelicans,” he reminded me. “Shooting the bird is a sign of solidarity. Come on.” He slid his arm around my shoulders, and we walked to calculus together, where I took my rightful place in the desk behind his.
***
In the shop that evening, exactly at closing time, I heard the antique cowbell jangle on the door. I was back in the shelves, cleaning pretty effectively because I was a little stressed out about my “date” with Will. And that was him!
Before I could even make it to the front counter, I heard him exclaim, “What a good dog!” But when I rounded the corner, I didn’t see him. I peered over the counter. He was sprawled on the floor (reserved Will Matthews was sprawled on the floor like a three-year-old) and tangled up with the shop dog, which probably weighed almost as much as he did. He was scratching the dog behind the ears, but with his arms around the thing, he looked more like he was hugging it. The dog licked Will’s cheek, flopped its tongue around in its mouth a few times like it was considering the taste, then lapped at Will’s nose. Will laughed. “Good boy. Girl?” He peered up at me. “Whose dog?”
“I have no idea.”
He cocked his head at me, perplexed, while the dog licked his temple. “Doesn’t it belong to Bob and Roger?”
“No.” I hollered toward the back of the long shop. “Bob, whose dog?”
His voice came faintly back. “I think she belongs to somebody on First Street. She’s waiting for us when we open in the morning. She likes the air-conditioning.”
“Makes sense to me,” Will told the dog, who licked his eye. Standing, Will wiped at his eyelid, then brushed some of the dog hair off his T-shirt. “I’ve always wanted a dog. My mom says no because she doesn’t want to clean up the hair, but I’m getting a dog the day I graduate from college.”
“Most guys say that about a Porsche, like they could afford one on their starting salary.”
Will shook his head. “Dog.” He held out his hand to me. “Ready to show me the town?”
***
“What do you know about this?” It was getting late, and Will had told me he was taking me home. But in the darkness, he stopped the car in front of a white two-story house—a mansion, really, a stalwart survivor of countless hurricanes, built in 1910 in the Georgian style with a tropical twist.
I’d shown him all over our little town in the past few hours. I’d taken him to a seafood joint that was, frankly, way better than the Crab Lab if you were after food rather than free beer on the back porch. I’d taken him on a driving tour of the many beaches besides the one where we’d held the band party. He said he ran long distance on the weekends, so I showed him the trail that extended all the way through town and into the wetlands.
Best of all, we’d run into some basketball players I knew at the seafood joint, a trumpet with her family at the beach, and a sophomore cheerleader on the trail. All of them would alert the media that they’d seen Will and me together. In terms of Will’s plan to make Angelica jealous, it was a triple word score.
But I doubted anybody I knew would be walking by on the dark, quiet street where we’d now parked. And this was the first time Will had suggested a stop on the tour.
I stared at the white mansion glowing in the moonlight, trying to puzzle out why Will had brought me here. “What do you mean, what do I know about it?”
“I want to major in architecture in college. My dad says no. He says I have to make sure I’m high up enough in a company that I never get transferred against my will. He wants me to major in business.”
“I can’t picture you as a business major,” I said. “Public Will, the face you show people, yes. Private Will, no. I think you would go a little crazy.”
“That’s what I think too.” He smiled at me in the near darkness. “Do you want to see my super-secret notebook that my parents can never find out about?”
“Sure!” I exclaimed, though I was frightened of what this secret could be. Maybe he was even more of a pirate than I’d imagined. God knew what Private Will had been hiding.